Rob Bishop: “When Ronald Reagan was first elected President, he talked to his National Security Advisor--I believe his name was…”

“When Ronald Reagan was first elected President, he talked to his National Security Advisor--I believe his name was Richard Allen--and told him that his policy for foreign affairs was going to be ``we win and they lose.'' It shocked his National Security Advisor because they had always been talking about managing communism or coexisting with communism. This was the first time somebody had actually come up with such a specific and precise rationale and policy for the Nation. But President Reagan also realized, for him to actually enact his goal, they first had to fix the economy, which, as strange as it seems, was worse than the economy we have today. With double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates, he had to first fix that before he could go on to his goal of actually winning the Cold War. He also recognized that if he was going to fix those economic problems, he had to have a reliable and affordable source of energy, and that, indeed, was one of the problems that caused the situation they were in under the Carter administration. Earlier this year we brought a couple of bills forward, one for the Defense Authorization Act and the Defense Appropriations Act, and I said at the time that the reason we had those here was because it allowed and empowered our State Department. Foreign policy is whatever we are willing to fund as far as military growth. They are interrelated.…”